Characterization and manipulation of full Poincaré beams on the hybrid Poincaré sphere

Abstract

We develop a hybrid Poincaré sphere to characterize the so-called full Poincaré beam with any polarization geometry. The two eigenstates of the hybrid Poincaré sphere are defined as a fundamental-mode Gaussian beam and a Laguerre–Gaussian beam. We further establish a robust and efficient experimental setup to generate any desired full Poincaré beam on the hybrid Poincaré sphere via modulating the incident polarization state of light. Our research provides an alternative way for describing and manipulating the full Poincaré beam and an effective method to control the polarization state of light.